Friday, October 22, 2010

SNOW...

I remember the days when I used to pray for snow and everything it represented. If it snowed enough, we might get a day or two off from school! Snowball fights, building snowmen, building forts, sledding and helping to shovel off the sidewalk…what could be better than that? If it fell before Christmas, it only added to the holiday spirit. If it fell after Christmas, it gave us a free day or two to play outside with our friends in a winter wonderland. Even when my girls were little, we took them out to make angels in the snow and snowmen. It was always a lot of fun and, when we came in, we had a nice cup of hot chocolate.

I do have fond memories of snow filled winters, but enough is enough! Now when I think of snow it’s a whole other story. I start strategizing as soon as the weathermen, who relish telling us about an upcoming storm and its severity, announce the snow is coming. You know how they report it. There’s a cold front from Canada that is going to hit a storm from the Midwest. Depending on what track it takes we could get 1 to 3 inches of snow. But once it starts falling, they play a new game called guess the inches. One to three turns in to 2 to 4, then 5 to 7, then 8 to 10 and finally we are going to get a blizzard and break the record from 1939! With each new prediction I am hyperventilating and planning my next move…

How are the girls going to get to school? If I drive them, there will be no parking spots when I get back. Why? Because in NYC people shovel all their snow into the streets and fill in what little parking spots we have with mountains of snow! If the girls take the bus, that’s an ordeal too. Everyone is taking the bus and they are overcrowded. Sometimes you have to wait 30 minutes or more for a bus you can squeeze into. The sanitation trucks take care of cleaning the streets here by plowing to the right. That means if you parked on the right side of the street your car will be plowed in. You will have to dig your car out for hours, only to get plowed in again every time they come down your street. If you are brave enough to take your car out, you may not find a parking space when you get back.

I used to be able to run in the snow, now I have a hard time walking. A lot of people don’t bother to shovel or they will make an 18 inch path. If they don’t clean it very well or neglect to put salt down, the snow freezes up and turns icy overnight. In the meantime, the lovely white blanket that fell the day before has turned gray and black from car exhausts and pollution. We clean our sidewalk very well and pile our snow near the curb, not the street. However, when school lets out, many kids walk on the mountains of snow on our curb and like a small avalanche, it falls back down on our sidewalk! If the weather warms up a bit or the sun comes out, we begin shoveling the snow into the street to help it melt faster. It’s all pretty exhausting and frustrating. I’m not even going to complain of the cold, I can easily take care of that by wearing layers. But the snow, I just can’t deal with it any more.

I always thought that Florida was a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there with all that heat. Every winter is making me really rethink my position on that. As for now, I cringe every time I hear the word snow, because for me S-N-O-W has become a four letter word!